The History of dating
Few realize that dating is a recent phenomenon. It came out of the 18th century philosophical movement that we now call "Romanticism" which emphasized passion rather than logic.
UH Oh, passion is an emotion and we have already seen that we can not trust emotions because emotions are unstable and are usually the result of rationalization and not truth.
Jean Jacques Rousseau said that the western civilization had become like nerdy and that decisions should be made based on emotions rather than intellect.
During this Romantic Age which extended from about 1789 until 1837, emotion was stressed over reason. One objective of the French Revolution (1789-1799) was to destroy an older tradition that had come to seem artificial and to assert the liberty, spirit, and heartfelt unity of the human race. To many writers of the Romantic Age this objective seemed equally appropriate in the field of English letters. In addition, the Romantic Age in English literature was characterized by the subordination of reason to intuition and passion, the cult of nature much as the word is now understood, the primacy of the individual will over social norms of behavior, the preference for the illusion of immediate experience as opposed to generalized and typical experience, and the interest in what is distant in time and place.
Throughout history, Christians were taught to love their spouse. See Ephesians 5:25; Titus 2:4. This implies that love follows marriage. Another way to say this is to love the one that you marry. The Romantics taught the opposite; marry the one you love. This looks okay on the surface but it presents some principle problems that are destroying society today. Husbands and wives own one another, they each have something that the other needs; this includes the emotions as well as the physicals. Oneness is oneness and it excludes nothing not even emotions. The Romantics taught that it was okay to cultivate an emotional relationship with some one other than your spouse. The Church has taken the same general approach by saying that it is okay to be emotionally promiscuous as long as you are not physically promiscuous. Everyone old enough to experience the hormonal trials knows that the brain, which contains the emotions, is the center of sexual stimulation. So society today is encouraging young people to increase the brain activity and expect that the physicals will not follow. the lack of commitment problem has reached epidemic proportions and yet we teach the "no commitment principle" when we say that is okay to flow emotionally as long as we restrict the physicals
Privileges that God intended to be reserved for His Divine institution of marriage are now casually given to this 18th century discovery called dating. Dating encourages emotional faithfulness in a temporary relationship and that is a conflicting status.